Fluorescent bulbs

A couple of months ago we noticed that the light fixture in the kitchen was getting a little dim. We opened it up and found that only two of the bulbs were working. So I replaced the two dead bulbs with new ones. A month later we had a repeat. The fixture was dim, so I figured the other two bulbs had failed. Should have replaced all four at once, save myself making another trip to the store. So I replace the burned out bulbs. Now wait a minute, these two bulbs are the SAME ones I replaced a month ago! What's going on? I swap bulbs around a bit and all four come on so I leave it. That lasts for a day or two. So I figure the ballast is probably shot. I could just replace the ballast, which would be a big hassle as it is probably riveted into the fixture and the wires go directly to the sockets, so it would mean drilling and cutting and splicing and all that. Also, last time I changed the bulbs, I wasn't as gentle as I could be, and I cracked the plastic cover while taking it off. I think the plastic has become brittle over time, I wasn't that rough with it. Anyway, it looks like the best solution is just to replace the whole fixture. So we go down to Home Depot yesterday and to buy a new one. We like the fixture we had, and, look, they have the same model here! So we're in luck. Well, not quite. The new fixture uses T-8 bulbs, which are newer and slimmer and, I suppose, better. New bulbs are $5 a piece, for the kitchen/bath color. Fluorescents come in a variety of colors now. The more like natural sunshine, the more expensive they are. The more like old, weird, industrial fluorescents, the cheaper they are.

Bulbs and Ballasts

I'm still ticked off that I have to buy new bulbs, so I look on the internet to see if I can use the old bulbs in the new fixture. I don't find anything definite, but I find a lot of comments about how the new bulbs are more efficient than the old ones, mostly due to the new, more efficient, electronic ballast. I finally decide to go ahead and use the new bulbs. They are only 32 watts and the old ones are 40 watts. Even if the old bulbs would work with the new ballast, they draw more current, and that may overload the new electronic ballast and cause it to fail prematurely, or even worse, spectacularly. So now I have six perfectly good fluorescent bulbs which I may never get to use. I have several other fluorescent fixtures in the house, but given my experience here, those ballasts may fail before the bulbs do. We shall see.

Talk about efficiency. The ballasts in the old fixture were both pretty warm. One was actually hot to the touch. It had been so warm for so long that it had cooked the adhesive holding the label on, and the label had fallen off. The label on the other ballast is still firmly attached. The old fixture had two heavy ballasts, the new fixture has only one, and it is much lighter. This made the fixture so light I was able to install by myself. I had to have Anne help me take the old one down.

Expansion Bolts

When the fixture was originally installed, it was just hung from the drywall, no special brackets connecting to the ceiling joists. The electricians used expanding wing bolts to hold the fixture to the ceiling. When they put these bolts in they made big holes (half an inch square) in the ceiling. You can't use holes that big for any other kind of expansion bolt. So I'm going to have to make new holes or use the same kind of expansion bolts. When I took the fixture down, the wings stayed in the ceiling. Can I get them out? Well, yes, with the judicious use of a pair of needle nose pliers I am able to shift the wings over so one end is visible through the hole. I grasp it at the very end and pull and out if comes. Cool. Not often that such a ploy works. Putting the fixture up with the old wing bolts was a snap.

Poison

When I was little, my mom warned me that the insides of fluorescent bulbs was poisonous. A few years ago I replaced some fluorescent bulbs and I tried to find out if fluorescent bulbs really were poisonous, or if they were considered hazardous waste. Couldn't find out anything about this. No mention of being hazardous or poisonous. Now I find that they are both hazardous AND poisonous. They contain a very small amount of mercury. Four foot long bulbs don't contain enough to be considered hazardous waste, but eight foot long bulbs do. I think the mercury is in the form of vapor, at least when the light is on. I suspect is condenses to liquid form when the light is turned off. I have never seen any droplets of mercury fall out of a broken fluorescent bulb, so the amount must me very small. It is, I believe, on the order of milligrams.

From http://www.ccme.ca/assets/pdf/merc_lamp_standard_e.pdf:

The manufacturers of mercury-containing lamps have reduced the mercury content of standard 4-foot T-12 lamps, with the average content declining from 48 mg/lamp in 1985 to 12 mg/lamp in 2000.

T-12 bulbs are the old standard size bulbs, about 1.5" in diameter.